Natural disasters appear to be on the rise worldwide and their increasing frequency and far-reaching devastation demand the attention of society. But do natural disasters really occur more often than before, or could we merely be seeing the effects of globalization? The rising interconnectedness and dependency within human systems increase in complexity while the nature of those connections gets more complicated and the number of system elements increases. "Managing Natural Catastrophes" argues that the key to finding a more effective response to natural disasters is to understand their many preventable causes.